


Bright in the Day

by hetrez



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Possession, Bonding, Friendship is Magic, Future-fic, Gen, Healing, Male-Female Friendship, Synesthesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-12-26 06:02:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18277259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hetrez/pseuds/hetrez
Summary: Quentin is staring at Eliot with those big sad eyes that Alice remembers, his hand twitching like he wants to reach out, while Eliot hunches up like a vulture and crumbles one of Josh's ungodly delicious muffins into a pile of raisins and crumbs. Alice deserves coffee, and she doesn't deserve this, and she almost just grabs her shoes and goes to goddamn Starbucks.Or: Alice, Eliot, a pocket dimension, a spell, and the healing power of friendship.





	Bright in the Day

**Author's Note:**

> If you don't love Alice "I don't give a shit about your stupid ditch-weeds" Quinn, then this story is probably not for you.
> 
> There is one instance of a character casting a spell on another character without warning or permission, but it is not intended to harm, and it's no more intense than what happens pretty much all the time in the show.

When Alice comes down for coffee and sees Quentin and Eliot standing at the kitchen island, she almost turns right back around. Nobody should have to deal with this before 10am.

But she and Kady hit a snag last night with the earworms, and then she got into another fight with her mom. She ended up staying awake all night craving bacon and a good fuck, and knowing she wasn't going to get either of them. For one thing, Q would have smelled the bacon cooking, and he would have _known_.

And now this: Quentin is staring at Eliot with those big sad eyes that Alice remembers, his hand twitching like he wants to reach out, while Eliot hunches up like a vulture and crumbles one of Josh's ungodly delicious muffins into a pile of raisins and crumbs. Alice deserves coffee, and she doesn't deserve this, and she almost just grabs her shoes and goes to goddamn Starbucks.

But. But.

The way Eliot is rubbing the tips of his fingers together and looking ill at the sight of food. The way he'll stumble sometimes, as if his legs aren't working right. Yesterday he had jumped and rubbed at his ears when Margo opened the curtains and a shaft of sunlight caught him in the face, as if the light was a scream instead. The way he looks confused at the world around him. The way he looks confused by his own hands. She knows this from the inside.

So instead of running away, she lifts her chin and marches over, and grabs Eliot’s plate full of crumbs.

"Alice, hey --" Quentin says, but Alice ignores him. She can't deal with both of them and be the kind of woman she wants to be.

She puts her back to Quentin and tells Eliot, "You're experiencing synaesthesia. You've had it since we got you back."

Eliot doesn't move. "Fascinating," he says. In the absence of muffin, his fingers begin to reach toward the paper napkin someone -- probably Q -- left beside the plate. His voice is empty.

Jesus. All she wanted was some fucking coffee. She says, "The muffin probably tastes like trumpet music or something, right? It's not bad, it's just not _food_ right now. I can help you."

Eliot turns, slowly, to look at her.

Alice can admit to herself, now, that she was always uncomfortable around him. The effortless way he hid his skills behind popularity and party tricks; the graceful way he moved; how he always seemed to understand _people_ and _situations_ , and he was always in control, and he didn't seem to care about anyone except Margo and Quentin. She had wanted, in the beginning, to be his friend. Later she had wanted to forget he existed. Today, she finds that she wants to help him. Life is the strangest thing.

Eliot looks her up and down. He's clearly trying to be intimidating, but he's wearing Margo’s green cashmere couch throw like a rescue blanket, and he hasn't shaved in days -- the razor must feel horrific against his skin.

"Alice," Quentin tries again.

Alice doesn't look at him. "Not everything is _about_ you, Quentin," she says.

"No," he says with that steady way he learned, somehow, after he stopped loving her. "Sometimes it's about my friends." Of which she isn't one, is unspoken but perfectly clear.

"Q, it's okay," Eliot says.

Quentin makes that sound, the one he makes when he wants to say something and he's got too many words, and all of a sudden none of them are the right ones. But he doesn't try to get in the middle of them again. Alice lifts her chin a little higher and watches Eliot, and she sees the moment he decides ignoring her is more trouble than it's worth. "You'll want a jacket," she says. "It's warm out, but the breeze will be too confusing."

Eliot looks at her for long seconds, and then swings around without a word and marches up the tacky spiral staircase. Alice waits until he's out of sight, takes a breath, and turns to meet Quentin's eyes.

She expects him to look like a tragic operetta, but instead he is watching her with this level gaze that she _hates_. He was never indifferent to her before. He wanted her or he was afraid of her or he was guilty about her, but he always _felt_ something. Now he feels things for everybody else, and she's on the outside.

Quentin says, "We already tried, me and Margo. Not bacon, he doesn't, but --" he shakes his head. "It didn't work."

Alice says, "Look, everybody's different, right? And when you shove something that's too big to be human inside a human body, it makes them even more different."

"So what does that mean?"

Multiverse please give her patience. “Eliot has -- different associations, different experiences, so it will be something else for him. Trust me on this one thing, Q," she says. "I know what it's like, and I want to help."

He stares at her, big-eyed, his indifference gone. All the exhaustion and longing and fear and pain from the last few months are clear on his face. Alice braces herself. Whatever he says next will be awful for her, whether he means it to or not.

Then Eliot is tromping down the stairs and out the door, thank god, and Alice can escape after him.

\---

Kady's apartment is in an art deco skyscraper near Central Park West, made all of bronze and blue glass. Alice didn't care about it when she first arrived; a place to sleep is a place to sleep. But now she likes it. Yesterday, Kady called it "extra". Alice likes the way it's extra.

They have a doorman, of all things. His name is Daryl and he's in the employ of the Baba Yaga. Sometimes Alice catches him and Pete playing dice in the evenings, Pete grumbling about how much money he'd win if he could still do magic. The building is near Strawberry Fields and the Dakota, and it's not a coffee wasteland or anything, but Kady trades information with a hedge who runs a cart at 74th and Central Park West, so Alice heads that way.

Eliot follows without questioning, hunched as small as a tall man can get in his loose, soft-looking Fillorian jacket. He doesn't glance around at the taxi cabs, the pedestrian traffic, the construction crews and designer poodles. She can see his hands clenching into fists, over and over, like he wants to put them over his eyes, or his ears, or scratch his own skin off. She casts a noise dampening spell, just a small one, and is rewarded when the tension eases slightly out of his shoulders.

She wants to enjoy the silence, but at 73rd she breaks. He's just _so much_ like she remembers being. "Look," she says, "I know you and I don't like each other --"

"I like you," Eliot says. His voice is still light, empty. Of course he's lying.

"No you don't," Alice says.

Eliot says, "You're smart, and you're mean. Nobody can break you. You'd give your life for your friends. Why wouldn't I like you?"

Alice stops in the middle of the block. An angry-skinny yoga socialite walking three inches behind her pulls up short to keep from crashing into her, and glares. Alice takes all the poison in her soul and pulls it into her expression and glares back, and the woman backs away from her like she's dangerous.

"That's why _I_ like me,” Alice says, once the socialite is dealt with. “You like glamorous people, and _good_ people, and people who love you."

"I like Margo," Eliot says.

"I'm not having this conversation with you," Alice says. She turns on her heel and heads toward the park. Fuck coffee, she needs to get this over with as soon as possible.

Eliot's legs are too long. Alice could charge ahead as fast as she wanted and he'd just amble along, and he'd still get wherever they were going before she would. She'd always felt like a teacup Yorkie walking next to a Great Dane, when she was following him anywhere. So she doesn't jog to the Bethesda Fountain, because what would be the point? She wants to, though.

"The question isn't if I like you," Eliot says, not noticing or not caring that she's trying to step in front of him. "The question is why you're helping me."

Alice laughs. "You mean, why am I helping the man my ex almost destroyed the multiverse order to save? You're right, I did have better things to do with my morning."

Eliot is quiet at that. It's a relief, Alice tells herself. She can't let herself be fooled into thinking they're -- anything. People like Alice don't get their friends back. The Julias, the Quentins, the Kadys, they can break your heart and you'll love them again as soon as they ask for it. But Alice is too cold. She likes herself too much and hates herself too much. She's staying with them and she's helping them, but as soon as she isn't useful Quentin will ask her to go.

There's a patch of woods right near the Bethesda Fountain that holds a pocket of space inside it, and on the other side of the pocket is the Brakebills lawn. Alice found it the year she snuck into the Brakebills exam. Those interview invitation spells were showy but inconsistent; you could just as easily arrive late, or not at all. Today, though, Alice steps into the pocket of space and waits for Eliot to join her, and then she seals it on both sides. Immediately the air grows sweeter, more filled with green things, and the noise of the city fades from a low hum to silence. Even the sunlight is gentler.

Another reason she brought him here: all the ambient from Brakebills is at her fingertips. Alice turns to Eliot and casts the spell she's been planning, and only afterward does she remember she probably should have asked first.

Eliot collapses to in a heap on the grass. "Holy shit," he says. "I feel so much better. How do I feel so much better?" He starts to laugh.

Alice sits down next to him. She starts to tuck her legs demurely under her and then thinks, _fuck it_ , and kicks off her shoes and sits cross-legged on a patch of wildflowers. She's going to be comfortable for this. If Eliot wants a peek up her skirt, let him have it. "I put a dampener on your senses. Some things will still leak through, but this is as good as I can make it without a sensory deprivation chamber, and those have their own problems."

Eliot flops on his back on the ground and smiles at the sky. "The velvet on my jacket feels like the way figs taste," he says. "Margo held my hand yesterday and I squeezed her so hard I hurt her fingers, without even thinking about it. I have too many elbows, or maybe not enough elbows? I don't know anymore." He sounds euphoric, like someone slipped ambrosia into the wildflowers. "And you just -- put a dampener on me. Just like that."

Alice shrugs, uncomfortable.

Eliot turns his head and glances at her. He gives her a sly smile, looking so much like the Eliot she first met at Brakebills that she feels that same tug her in chest, the urge for him to like her, to want her around. "Come on," he says. "I know you want to say it."

Alice holds out for all of five seconds, and then, "It's not like it was _difficult_ ," she says.

Eliot grins at her, and closes his eyes, and turns his face toward the sun.

\---

Eliot basks for long minutes, and Alice practices Slovenian declensions in her head. She massages an ache out of her pinky finger. She waits for the question.

"Why did we leave, then?" Eliot asks, "If you could have done this anytime?"

There it is. "Because you needed to be somewhere they aren't," she says, “for a little while.” She gets ready for the argument.

But instead Eliot just lies there for a moment and then says, softly, "I did."

\---

Alice had a plan. Talk to him about his synaesthesia. Do some experiments to find out what foods he can eat. Give him spells to work on, for when the world gets to be too much. Instead she sits cross-legged in her tiny skirt in the wildflowers, flashing her underpants at anyone who might be lurking in the woods, and watches the way the trees move in the breeze while Eliot lies next to her right foot and naps. He wakes up about an hour later, after she's gotten bored and summoned a book from Dean Fogg's private collection. Happy Magic for Necrophiliacs. Alice grabbed for it at random, and then she'd thought it was satire, but no. Turns out that when you get preemptive, enthusiastic consent for posthumous events, you can do all sorts of positive, life-affirming things with a corpse and a little sex magic. She's very glad she never learned this as a niffin.

Eliot, looking half-awake at best, glances up at her book and frowns. "I honestly didn't think you had it in you," he says.

Alice shuts the book and offers it to him. “Take it,” she says.

Eliot doesn’t get up out of his sprawl, but he does start to inch his shoulders away from her. “I’m not really into that kind of thing. But no shame.”

Alice huffs. “Just take the damn book.”

Eliot inches further away. “Books don’t — feel good,” he says.

Alice remembers touching sheet after sheet of paper at Brakebills South, the pencil in her hand, and how wrong it had been: too smooth, almost oily feeling, with a buzz like she was sticking her fingers in an electrical socket. She’d kept writing anyway, because she had to _remember_ , she had to.

“I know,” she says. “I put a dampener on you, remember? If you want my help, take the book.”

Eliot takes the book gingerly by his fingertips. Then he clutches at it, looking shocked, and stares at her. “It feels like,” he says, and shakes his head. "It feels real."

Alice says, “That’s your brain filling in the memory.” She had tried spell after spell, those first days at Brakebills South, before magic got taken away and she had to retrain her senses on her own. “I’m going to take the dampener off your hands for a second, and then put it back. Don’t drop the book.”

She flicks her fingers, and the dampening spell dissolves up to his wrists. Eliot gasps, and Alice quickly pulls the dampener back up again. “Jesus, that’s awful,” Eliot says.

“You’ll have to do that a lot, maybe a couple hundred times? And not just for your hands, for everything," Alice tells him. After magic had been taken away, she had forced herself through Brakebills South on miserable, sensitive feet, touching everything: a quick tap, a longer touch, rubbing the tips of her fingers on glass and then vellum and then rope. She hadn’t known if she would ever feel the world around her the right way again, the way she was supposed to. But there was nothing else to be done except try.

By that point she’d sent Quentin away, so only Myakovsky could see her when she also tried to cry like a normal human girl and failed, again and again.

Alice shakes the memory off. “The dampener can be done one-handed, so you can practice by yourself if you want to.” She takes a breath. “We shouldn't keep it on you for long. It starts to mess with everything, the way you breathe and the way your heart beats. About four hours a day is safe.”

Eliot looks at the book, then at her hands, then at her face. “How do you know all this?” he asks.

Alice, for a moment, doesn’t want to tell him. It’s hers. She lost so much, and she doesn’t want to give away anymore just to satisfy Eliot’s curiosity.

Except that’s a lie, and she lost the trick of lying to herself when the prism split her in two. She wouldn’t have offered to help him if she didn’t want him to know.

“When I was a niffin,” she says, “I was everything in the universe all at once. When they brought me back, I don’t know, maybe a little of the universe came with me? My body couldn’t hold everything that I had been, and it made me different.”

“Yes,” Eliot breathes. “Like your soul had to be stretched, in order to fit all that magic stuck inside you.”

“And now it’s been stretched out too far,” Alice says, “and it can’t go back.”

Eliot nods. His eyes are huge.

It feels so good, down to her bones, to be _understood_ , even if only for a second, that Alice has to look away.

They stay there on the grass in the little pocket of space Alice found, and then after long minutes of quiet Eliot says, "My hands want to squeeze things." 

The way he says it, voice low — she can tell, somehow, that he hasn’t told Quentin or Margo. When she looks over, he is holding the book above him as if to block out the sun, and his eyes are darting around. He looks like he’s about to cry. 

Alice says, “I’m not surprised.” Then she grimaces. _Good job, Quinn, go ahead and make it worse_. 

Eliot doesn’t seem to notice. "I talk like him sometimes, I can tell from the looks in their faces. I wake up remembering things that never happened, only they did because they happened to him, and then I think, ‘but that _was_ me,’ and then I remember again that it wasn’t. And my eyes. They’re…” 

Alice says, "When I was a niffin I could see beyond the visible light spectrum." 

Eliot says, "Yeah, I think he could, too." He puts the book on top of his face, tipping it from one side to the other over his nose. "This was my body for twenty-five years, and he had it for eight fucking months and now it's his."

Alice hesitates. But this, whatever this is, it feels good and she might not ever have it again. And maybe her mom was right, that it’s good to talk about her feelings every once in a while. She says, "You wonder if you'll ever be the same person again.” 

“Yes," Eliot says. She is so grateful for that yes, it almost makes her angry. 

"Maybe you're not a person at all anymore,” she says. “Maybe you’re just what’s left over when the best parts get killed." 

" _Yes_ ," Eliot says. 

“And you can't tell Quentin,” Alice says. 

“And you can't tell Quentin," Eliot says. "No matter how much you want to.” 

Alice says, "Because he loves you too much." Eliot turns his head to stare at her and she ignores it. She’s not stupid, Jesus. "And he would tear the world down to make you better, but you can't just _be better_." 

"You can't," Eliot says, voice soft. 

“And sometimes you don't want someone to try to fix it. You want someone to listen to all your shit, and then tell you, 'Suck it up, you stupid bitch.'" 

Eliot squints at her. "I don't actually want that." 

Alice shrugs. "I do." 

Eliot smiles. He says, “And you thought I wouldn’t _like_ you.” His tone is teasing, that ‘There, there, bunny rabbit’ tone she’s only ever heard him use with people he cares about. And Alice is glad, so glad, that she didn’t go for coffee on her own. 

\--- 

They try the spell a few more times. Each time Eliot shivers, looking teary and confused and hopeful. Then Alice sends the book back to Fogg's library 

("Really?" Eliot asks. "There? I didn't know he had it in him either.") 

and they try the spell with grass, then with the embroidery on Eliot’s jacket. They try it with the bag of crumbs that Alice stuck into her purse, while Eliot was getting ready back at Kady's. They feel like crumbs should against his fingertips, so Eliot tries eating them.

He devours everything in the bag. "I know I should be disappointed that it doesn't taste like Josh's cooking," he says. "But I'm just so relieved it doesn't taste like _sounds._ God, I'm starving. Do we have anything else?" 

Alice summons a roasted chicken leg from the kitchen at the Physical Kids' cottage, along with a cup of vegan yogurt, a bottle of water, a Tupperware container of roasted vegetables, and two mugs of coffee. Eliot finishes off everything but the second cup of coffee. 

"Thank you, thank you," he says. He's graduated to rolling around on the grass, tumbling over and over, although he hasn't gotten up yet except to sip from his mug. "I will never again question your plans. Jesus, I miss the taste of candy. Don’t ever tell that to anyone." 

Alice holds her coffee mug without drinking and watches him. It might be time to turn off the dampening spell, if he's starting to feel euphoric like this. 

Eliot comes to a stop lying flat on his face. He giggles. It's definitely time to reverse the dampener. 

"I'm going to take the dampener off, slowly," she says. "We can do it here before we go back outside, to make the transition easier." 

"Okay," he says weakly, waving a hand. 

Alice dissolves the spell from his hands, and then up his arms to his head and then down to his feet. As she goes, she can see the tension returning to his shoulders and his hands, but that empty, hopeless look is still gone. 

She banishes the chicken bones, the water bottle, the yogurt container, the empty coffee mug. Eliot takes his time sitting up, and when he does his shoulders fall into that vulture hunch again. Alice wants to hunch a little herself. She feels, suddenly, like once they step outside, they'll go back to the way they were, how they didn't care about each other at all. But she doesn't think that's what she wants anymore. 

Alice opens her mouth to say -- _something_ , she doesn't know. But before she can, Eliot sighs and says, "All right. Commercial break over." 

Well, that’s it, then. "We should get back," she says. She has no idea if she's disappointed or grateful that Eliot spoke first. 

She banishes her coffee without having drunk any. It's gone cold while they were talking, and coffee just doesn't taste the same when it's been reheated. She starts to get up, tugging at her skirt, and then Eliot leans over and offers her his hand.

She stares at it for a second, then at him. He raises his eyebrows, and a corner of his mouth tucks up into something that might, in some other universe, be a smile. She knows that from the inside, too. She takes his hand, feeling his fingers spasm at the contact, and she lets him help her to her feet. Then she finds the seam of the little world she closed around them, and peels it back again. 

\--- 

Back at Kady's, Margo has joined Quentin at the kitchen island. He doesn't look like he's moved in the hours she and Eliot have been gone. Margo is leaning close to him, saying something quiet and fierce, and when Eliot comes in the door and looks up with a scowl. "Where the fuck have you two been?" She asks. 

Eliot says, "Bambi,” and it’s too intimate, the way the two of them are looking at each other and the love in Eliot’s voice. Margo stares at him, her hand clenched into a fist on top of the kitchen island. Quentin, next to her, is looking at Eliot like the sun just came up. 

Alice shakes her head. She doesn’t need to be here for this. There’s going to be hugs, maybe, and tears, and probably kissing if Eliot’s senses don’t riot. Watching that is not what she wants from her day. 

Besides, she has work to do. She has people who like her, Zelda and Kady and Nick, wherever he is. She has knowledge that can help people. She has herself. Right now, right in this moment, she wouldn’t trade any of that. 

Alice goes to the study. Kady’s already there with seven books laid out in front of her, and two to-go cups at her elbow. Alice smiles. 

“Hey,” Kady says, not looking up. “I had an idea for a sturdier tracer. Come look at this.” She holds out one of the to-go cups. It has a logo from Alice’s favorite coffee shop, and it’s still hot. 

Alice sits, and she looks, and she lets herself feel happy about this life she’s building. 

The first sip of coffee tastes like bells. 

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Magic for Necrophiliacs dedicates the first three chapters to every way someone has exploded or gotten their flesh turned inside-out when they didn't get seriously, _seriously_ enthusiastic consent from the soon-to-be-deceased. Fogg received it as a gift from Bigby, so he definitely can't get rid of it because she'll know. He wishes it were satire.


End file.
